The UK’s National Drought Group has issued an unusual appeal to citizens: delete old emails and unused photos. The reason? Data centres, which store and process digital information, consume massive amounts of water to keep their servers cool. By cutting down on stored data, officials argue, people can indirectly help ease pressure on the country’s strained water resources amid a worsening drought.
Helen Wakeham, Environment Agency Director of Water, stressed that the situation is “nationally significant” and called for everyone to contribute. “Simple, everyday choices, such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails, really help the collective effort to reduce demand and preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife,” she said.
Several regions, including Yorkshire, Cumbria, Greater Manchester, the Midlands, and Merseyside, are already under formal drought declarations, with reservoirs only 67.7% full compared to the usual 80.5%.
Data centres are at the heart of the problem. Smaller ones can consume more than 25 million litres of water annually if using traditional cooling systems. Larger facilities, like Google’s data centre in Oregon, reportedly used 355 million gallons of water in a single year—enough to fill over 500 Olympic-size swimming pools. With the rise of AI and cloud computing, water consumption in data centres is expected to climb even further.
Alongside the digital clean-up, officials are urging citizens to adopt other water-saving habits: collecting rainwater, fixing leaks, reusing kitchen water for plants, and cutting shower times.